Revenge of the Clones
by Wermo
Summary: AU: Jessi assembles an army of clones. Chapter 1 gives the reason. That chapter might be a bit much for T but I have every hope to keep it there. This is for Jessi fans & there will be lots of action! Review please!
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: All Kyle XY universe characters and locales belong to some other entity, whether singular or plural. In plainer English: I own nothing when it comes to the Kyle XY franchise.**

PROLOGUE

A round table large enough to sit sixteen individuals sat in a dimly lit room, its fifteen occupants' faces cloaked in perpetual shadow.

One said in a somber voice, "XY has been corrupted; he killed Grace's son in cold blood." The silence was thick in the room for several moments, the occupants' stomach's digestive noises likely producing more noise.

Another said, "The son was following directions from Grace. Her membership has been terminated." Several heads turned to the empty seat.

And still another, this one a woman, "XY had so much promise; is there a way to salvage his innocence, his promise?"

The first replied, "There is a high probability of recurrence, at least 85% that an experiment will turn on its creators. XY, although close to the ideal, cannot be allowed to survive."

The woman stated the obvious, "He is being terminated."

The first announced, "He and his so-called family already have been."

A fourth voice interrupted from outside the circle, via one-way intercom, "Lordships, excuse the interruption, but the operation was only a partial success." A brief pause for a quick swallow followed. "XX has escaped. XY has been confirmed dead at the scene."

CHAPTER 1: Sacrifice

One media outlet was already at the scene of the conflagration, even before the firefighters despite the five alarms in the home. Or more accurately, the twisted husk that once was a home.

The female reporter stared gravely into her camera, as she reported from the scene, "Neighbors reported numerous explosions inside the home. Police have already come on record suspecting an illegal drug lab being run in the home's basement. There is no official word yet on casualties but it is suspected there were several people in the residence when the first explosions took place at about two in the morning." The report continued in detail, while neighbors were kept at bay.

When the fire trucks came into view at the tail end of the news reporter's monologue, the woman ended her report with another announcement. "The city of Seattle seems to be in the middle of a drug gang cleansing, as a local warehouse has also been destroyed in a giant blaze at nearly the same time. We will report further from that scene when we have more information."

They hurriedly packed up and left the scene, leaving before the hoses were even connected to the nearest hydrants.

***

When the head firefighter saw the destruction and witnessed the news truck leaving in a flurry of dirt and dust, he turned to the trainee who was under orders to remain within the cabin for their safety, "Did you catch that news van on the video feed?"

The young man nodded and read the license plate. "Clear as day sir."

"Good man." His attention was already pulled back to the towering blaze. This was not a normal fire by any means. The house had already crumpled on itself. It looked very much like a bomb or grenades had been thrown inside, because there was debris everywhere covering the grass for at least a dozen yards. To another firefighter, he ordered, "Get the bystanders out of here!"

As the fire shined in his eyes he knew the house was a total loss. It was a miracle that no neighboring houses had caught on fire from the size of the apparent explosions. His crew had a better than average response time when getting to emergencies and tonight had been particularly good.

He sighed as he ordered the neighboring houses hosed down and to let this one burn itself out a bit. There was no way he was sending anyone into that inferno; the house looked like it would crumble even further any second.

The forensics guys would be working a long time on this case, picking through the rubble.

There was always something left from a fire, however bad it was. It was only a question of whether it would be useful.

***

Jessi remembered every second of the attack clear as day, or night, she thought ruefully. She had never had the trouble that Kyle had with common expressions, and she was stronger than him in many ways, but he always managed to surprise her, even in death.

They'd heard the van park silently outside the house in the dead of night, while they had been making out in the dark. With their enhanced vision, they could easily see the other's body with the meager light from the lone window in the corner.

She'd been partially oblivious, enjoying the electricity sparking over and between them, but he'd stopped immediately to listen. Four very frantic heartbeats were coming rapidly toward the house, showing definite signs of adrenaline.

The week before Michael Cassidy had threatened and nearly killed Kyle. Although he'd killed him, in self defense, and Tom Foss had taken great care to dispose of the body, someone was coming for them. Both topless, they emerged as one from his bedroom to confront the invaders. Just from their heartbeats, they knew where they were. Two of them had entered the house, seemingly unarmed.

Kyle had crippled one attacker with a kick to the back of the neck. She had forced all the blood in her target to climb to the man's head, causing a great fount of blood to erupt from eyes, nose, and ears as arteries, veins, and heart collapsed. She hadn't considered how much of a mess her way of doing things would make, and had felt terrible outright killing her man, but now knew they'd been sent in to die.

As she had stood frozen, watching the blood spout in all directions, Kyle had broken through her concentration. A single image in her head was burned there: a bomb, large enough to bring the house crashing down on them, and quite likely set every house around them on fire.

She stared at the two figures still outside, a woman and a man. There was no time for them though; he'd been right in telling her to flee. As she ran toward the new screen door, the same screen door that had been blasted to bits the previous week, he had put himself between her and the bomb.

Somehow he'd contained the fireball; she envisioned him absorbing it and directing it straight up. She even knew he'd lived four seconds after the bomb had ignited. He'd sent her a message telepathically; it was something she'd never even considered he could do.

Her brain hurt as it assimilated the information. She recognized it instantly, feared it, but it held firm within her. It was his legacy, his burden, but now it was hers.

Now she knew why he'd been so fervent and passionate in the last week, and why they'd been alone for almost 30 hours prior to the attack. He'd partially decoded the package, and had devised a mission for them to take. But he had also known they were on borrowed time, and had sacrificed his life for her. Would Latnok know that the Tragers were away at Foss's expense?

She didn't even know where they were, and she suspected Foss would be already dead if she sought him out. It didn't matter anyway, for her goal now was to find the others, and turn them to their cause. She only had to show them this memory.

***

In a small bare room, she sat on a small cot, planning. It had been tremendously easy once she'd run into the forest next to where she'd been born – at the age of sixteen from an artificial womb – to get to safety. There were countless shelters for battered and abused women and so she'd managed to get a change of clothes, chop off her hair, and give herself a nice big black eye and puffy cheek as a way to get in without any questions. Although the story had been clearly fabricated for her audience, her tears had not.

Latnok, the secret organization under the supposed guise of being humanitarians, had killed the most selfless and kind man she knew. The fact they'd created him made them think they owned him.

When she overheard someone walking down the hall, she started to cry for theatrics. It was a common sound in neighboring rooms, and would ensure privacy, unless she escalated it too much. She only needed a little time, perhaps a week or a month, of anonymity to make Latnok believe her dead.

In the meantime she would set all her plans in motion from within the tiny room, and she would make sure Kyle's sacrifice was not in vain. A lump formed in her throat momentarily, but quickly returned to normal. She would grieve, but not now. Vengeance was more important.


	2. Chapter 2

CHAPTER 2: Anger and Answers

When Jessi's eyes fluttered open and she saw the shabby white walls surrounding her, her heart ached immediately. She'd fought the grief long enough; she was safe, at least for now. Had she allowed the reality of the situation sink in all at once yesterday, she likely would have done something rash. She could only imagine – with a rueful smirk – attacking the two who'd stayed outside to detonate the bomb, a topless commando snapping their necks as the bomb ignited behind her, consuming her, killing her where she stood.

Kyle had been right; her only option had been to run. It did not make the loss any easier to bear, however. She let the tears flow, a virtual deluge as she thought of the man she loved, who had loved her back for little more than a month since Amanda had broken up with him. The man who had been completely transformed after he'd killed a man who sorely deserved it, a man she would have loved to hold by the neck, not that it was ethical of course.

Before Cassidy's death, Kyle had been timid and kind to a fault, always putting others' feelings ahead of his own. But only after three hours and seventeen minutes of grieving, he'd begun working feverishly in his room, and had organized plans to get the family out of the home before the end of the week. Tom Foss had come and gone to dispose of the body.

Their family had left them alone, giving them the time and space they thought Kyle needed while she stayed by his side. It was a reaction she'd never foreseen. She had expected the therapist side of Nicole, their mother, to react differently to murder, even if that murder had been committed to prevent his death.

When Kyle had not stopped working for seven hours without a single glance her way, she'd left him to help their dad Stephen with the replacement of the screen door. The entire family had already fixed up much of the damage to the kitchen and kept asking her how Kyle was feeling, knowing she could feel what he did.

Her heart broke again when she remembered the connection that was no longer in her chest. Kyle was gone. She cried desperately into her pillow, trying not to attract undue attention. She might have been able to control herself last night – it had been a matter of survival, something she did well – but today it was to keep from totally breaking apart.

It would be so easy to give up or even worse, to leave and go after Latnok as she was, without any preparation, and without hope. Sure, with her abilities, her strength, and her speed she could likely take out fifty or a hundred people, _if_ she knew where they were, which she didn't.

Latnok was a highly secretive organization; one which she'd learned often kept things from itself in order to preserve its secrets. Kyle had repeatedly told her he'd made a terrible mistake, but refused to elaborate. She'd nagged him to explain over two hours. At the time she hadn't thought it was nagging of course, but it had even sent him next door to Amanda for nearly two hours, until her mother came home and he'd jumped out her bedroom window.

In retrospect that should have bothered her a lot more, but when he came straight to her and kissed her full on the mouth, with the words she'd only previously dreamed of hearing, "I need you Jessi," and "I love you Jessi," she'd melted like chocolate left out in the sun.

She'd been confused when he'd left her in his room to send the other family members on errands; with his puppy dog eyes and tears at the surface of his eyes, they had not refused him. But when he returned, everything had become crystal clear.

He'd broken up with Amanda, and wanted her alone.

When and wherever they had touched, sparks had flown.

Amidst the tears, she smiled when she recalled the numerous light bulbs they would have fried that afternoon had they not completely shut off the power first. Even so, the bulbs nearest them had blown when they'd had sex for that first time.

It was said that sex for girls wasn't supposed to be pleasant the first time, for a variety of reasons. She could have enumerated them but didn't bother. Maybe the electricity coursing through them had kept her attention elsewhere because the pain had been minimal at best. Kyle had been so attentive and tender and in her head that she'd accepted him without any resistance or apprehension.

It went by faster than she'd expected too and soon they were dressed again and he went back to work. But this time he had seconds to spare to hold her hand or hold her eyes with his. When the family returned they ate together and Kyle was almost his old self.

He slept only two or three hours every night that last week. He had clearly known Latnok would retaliate, that Grace Kingsley would retaliate for the death of her biological son. Her egg might have been used to help create Kyle, but she and Kyle were only freaky science experiments to the Latnok scientists.

Her thoughts veered back to her family. She loved them so much too, but doubted she'd ever see them again. A few days later, Kyle had them all packed up and ready to go on a vacation somewhere; it was then he told them all that he expected Latnok to strike back sometime very soon and wanted them somewhere safe and that Tom had the perfect solution, only to say he asked Tom not divulge it to him.

During daylight hours during his last week, he'd behaved strangely like that, as though he suspected he would be tortured for information, and that they would try to break him by killing their family one person at a time. It was true they had once tried to forcibly take the information in his head, the same information he'd telepathically sent her. It was very dangerous information; she could tell only from what she'd already uncovered.

Once night fell and they were completely alone, they'd routinely made sparks dance along the walls. She'd even given the sparks color. He'd made them bounce and she'd made them burst like fireworks. They had practically had a life of their own.

It bothered her deep down though, in the space where her connection to Kyle had been, that she would never see him again. Well, she could see him anytime she wanted to in her memory, so she amended the thought with the single most important word: alive.

She was mostly sad, and she knew the tears would keep coming for weeks, and quite possibly months whenever she would think of him. There was just a little anger directed at Kyle though for having chosen to stay and fight instead of running away. Together they could have done so much more. They could have kept each other safe, and stayed a step ahead of Latnok.

"Could we really Jessi?" Kyle said, lying next to her on the very small cot. Had he been truly there, he would never have fit beside her. He was her subconscious, displaying itself as her lost love.

"Yes we could," she whispered back, not wanting to attract undue attention.

He sighed and said, "We certainly would have been safe, but what about Josh, Lori, Nicole, and Stephen?" He said the names slowly, to prove a point. "What about our neighbors? They would have destroyed our home anyway, whether we were there or not, and without me there it would have engulfed the houses next to ours, affecting that many more lives." He gave her a sad smile. "I couldn't let them do that, and you know it."

Her vision blurred further as fresh tears cascaded down her face. She'd known why he'd sacrificed himself, but it didn't make it easy. It never would be easy to live without him, without her Kyle.

The fact he vanished was not lost on her. Her subconscious had only wanted her to accept his sacrifice and not rail against it. He'd given her a mission, one that would take months to fulfill, but that would safeguard all the other clones out there from suffering a similar fate.

The others may not have Cassidy to make their lives a living hell, or turn their lives completely upside down, but they likely had their own demons. With likely few exceptions the others were supposedly nowhere near as advanced as they were. They had to band together for safety, for their rights as human beings.

_Oh yeah_, she thought, _the whole revenge thing too_.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3: Charles St-Jean

Charles St-Jean logged into his favourite social networking site and browsed the messages put on his profile from friends and near strangers alike. He read the pages of posts quickly; he could read on average 50 words a second. By the time he'd read through four pages of drabble his eyes stopped at a mysterious post.

It read, "Ever wondered why you look so much like your dad?" By itself it might not have registered as anything peculiar other than the fact he did think it all the time, even though he always kept it to himself. The problem was that his father didn't have any pictures of himself as a teenager and they didn't have any extended family. Another problem was that his dad's job made them move often, as many as three times a year, and therefore no one around him ever knew them well enough to comment on their similarities. Heck, none of his friends here had even _seen_ his dad.

For example, they both had a blotch under their left ear lobe, a birth mark. It wasn't just similarly placed. It looked identical: texture, colour, and placement.

A few years ago he'd attributed it to chance, the unlikely but entirely possible, however remotely, that such a thing could occur at the same place, in the exact same manner, to two different people. For a mark as unusual as this though, it was almost beyond improbable. This was not the only thing similar between them, and it also wasn't the most glaring.

Charles loved math, he could almost see the numbers and equations solving themselves when he was presented a problem. Sure, sometimes he oversimplified a problem or made an incorrect or unnecessary assumption, but most of the time his solutions were right. They just came to him.

His private math teacher didn't find it at all unusual, but his few friends did.

The posts on his profile were all supposed to be signed, but remarkably this one wasn't. He clicked where the profile link of the poster was, expecting it to be hyperlinked but finding it leading offsite to a page full of garbled junk. He clicked back and tried again and got the same result. He cleared his cache, backed out of the page, and tried again. Same result.

Intrigued, he scanned the gunk for anything of value. It was just a total mass of letters, numbers, and symbols all seemingly randomly placed, with the exception of two spaces three spaces apart. He double-clicked there and was pleasantly surprised the highlighting showed white text, once hidden from view because the background had been white too. The hidden text was two numbers.

He found a link to a second page and again there were two spaces near the bottom of the page, but this time separated by a number of characters. Highlighting it, he had the second part of an address. He immediately recognized it as the library where he spent much of his time studying.

He logged off immediately, pocketed his trusty pocket knife – you never could be too sure these days – and walked out the door after locking it.

***

She spotted the young kid enter the library as expected. She'd come here the moment her links had been clicked, thinking it highly probable that he'd find and recognize the address she left him. She wasn't disappointed. Nonetheless, Jessi stayed back, hovering behind the stack of books to make sure he wasn't trailed.

It wouldn't do to have a Latnok lackey see her, even if she'd cut her hair obscenely short and died it a fiery red, including her eye brows. She watched him from a safe distance, noting his constant heartbeat. If he was worried, he wasn't showing any sign of it; it made her smile.

He went upstairs to the second floor, where the computers were. She sat in one of the chairs nearest the exit with a book she feigned to read, waiting for him to return. It didn't take long – only a little over five minutes. When he walked by her, sighing audibly, she carefully put the book back where she'd found it and stood.

She clenched her jaw when she had a sudden dizzy spell. Over the last week she'd had a number of these and they bothered her. They weren't particularly troublesome – she couldn't detect any physical ailment inside her – but because she didn't know their cause she was mentally tracking their occurrence. The chart she saw in her mind showed a small, gradual increase to the frequency of events, and they also seemed to happen most when getting up quickly or when she ran.

Maybe she was tired or needed more sleep but she doubted it. She'd had much more sleep than she'd ever had when she was in the shelter for a little less than three months. Could it be the water or maybe the altitude? She was in the Canadian Rockies, in a town very near to a city named Kelowna.

If she hadn't been on a mission, she very easily could have fallen in love with the scenery. Seattle got a lot of rain, even though the weather was pretty good all year round otherwise. What she'd read on Kelowna made her think she would have loved to live here with Kyle, and raise a family.

Family. The word had once brought romantic thoughts to the forefront of her mind, but now she had to push it away. It might have been more than three months now since Kyle had sacrificed his life for her but the grief was still fresh, and was likely exacerbated by the occasional nightmare she had of that night. Because of her perfect memory, the details were always perfect, and still very disturbing.

She shook her head slightly when she noticed the 14-year-old walk out of the library. When she went outside, he had just untied his bike. She took a few hurried steps toward him, but stayed a few feet away. She said softly, "Have you ever thought you were a clone?" Being a small city, in fact only a town by the Canadian definition – she discarded the definition before it fully surfaced – she already knew there was no one within hearing distance.

Not surprisingly he jumped and started to stumble off his bike. Without touching him or the bike, she stabilized it and kept him from falling. He noticed, and his eyes practically popped out of his head. He recovered quickly, and looked her from head to toe. "You?"

She smiled slightly, not proud that she'd hacked into his profile and practically invited him here, but because it was polite to let a tongue tied teenager off the hook for monosyllabic sentences. "My name's Kessi," she said, extending her hand.

When he took her hand, she got a very hard look in her eyes. She was all business.


	4. Chapter 4

**Author's Note: I made a mistake in Chapter 3 that I have now fixed. It said that Jessi had stayed at the shelter for a little less than five months. It should read three. My apologies.**

Chapter 4: Unexpected

She brought Charles into her memory of the tiny dungeon she'd called home for nearly three months. Jessi released his hand as he visibly panicked from the drastic change in surroundings. To his credit he didn't say anything but he did put his hand into his pocket, which she noticed with curiosity. Her gaze steeled further when she realized he'd come prepared with some sort of weapon.

When he grasped nothing in his pocket he looked her in the eye and yelled, "What did you do to me?" He didn't let her respond. "Where's my knife?"

She had plans for every potential reaction in her head. She had prepared scenarios and had been reasonably certain that an aggressive reaction was the most likely, as was the case here with Charles. She had to defuse the situation first then make him see reason. Logic and reason would work with the people she would recruit only because they were very smart, definitely well above average.

Yet Charles was nowhere near her or Kyle. She had yet to discover anyone as advanced as they were. She resisted the pain in her heart; it was still fresh. This was the safest place to be. Inside her head, in her memory, she couldn't accidentally break anyone's neck, and they had no chance to harm her, not that they had much of a chance to begin with.

"Charles," she started, raising her arms in a non threatening manner. "You're safe; you're in my head."

He looked around wildly. "Your head's a crappy little room?" His gaze stopped on the wall beside the head of the cot. He saw her scribbling, her doodles. Before leaving she had erased them but she kept them here.

_ Kyle + Jessi = Kessi_. She noticed it too and resolved to remove the doodles and notes from future recruiting sessions. That single scratched note would produce more questions than she wanted to answer in what needed to be a very short session, no more than five minutes.

"So who's Kyle?" He'd easily deduced from her introduction as Kessi that she was in fact Jessi and therefore asked the obvious question. Yes, she'd have to remove that doodle.

Even so, the true answer came to mind but she didn't voice it. Kyle had been everything to her, even heartbreak and frustration. For a while at least he'd also been bliss and love. Her train of thought threatened to spill onto some tracks she didn't want to travel on. She couldn't believe she'd not considered it sooner.

"I'm pregnant," she muttered to no one in particular.

"Kyle knocked you up then," he asked, leering at her.

They'd been two feet apart but after that nasty comment she was beside him with her hand to his neck in the blink of an eye. She lifted him but didn't squeeze. She could have squeezed his neck down to the width of a millimeter and it wouldn't have done anything anyway.

Nonetheless he thought he was being choked. "No!" he yelled. He put his hands to his neck for two seconds before he also noticed no harm coming to him. "Shouldn't this hurt?"

She released him and he landed on his feet. She shook her head. "We're both safe here." As long as her body didn't detect anyone approaching, they would remain the full five minutes. Besides, with the time differential between reality and her memory, it was a pretty safe meeting place. Every minute spent here was about a second outside.

To think she'd just wasted 46 seconds and even attacked her first recruit. She sighed noisily, wasting another two seconds.

Scrapping much of her planned dialogue, she started anew, "I can prove to you that you are a clone." In her hand was the best picture she'd found in the Zzyzx file so far showing Adam Baylin and Charles's _father_. She handed it to him.

After only a small glance he turned back to her. "How do I know you're not pulling this out of your—"

She interrupted him, knowing full well the word he'd been about to use. Although such language had never offended her before, she found it increasingly offensive since Kyle's death. "_Look_ at it Charles! Don't you see your birthmark there? I know it's in profile, about 77 degrees from a true profile shot of course, but –"

He interrupted her. "I was thinking between 75 and 80 degrees too…"

She resumed, "But you'll notice it's not you. It's your father." When he started looking very closely at the picture, she continued, "The man he's with was Kyle's father."

"Why must I be a clone though? It's mathematically possible that I look identical to my father isn't it?"

"That's wishful thinking Charles. I could show you video stills of the lab where you were made."

"But not video right," he commented.

"With any luck, maybe in a year I could piece something together."

He turned serious and said, "You _are _joking right?"

Her jaw set and she stood straight. "Dead serious Charles. Kyle and I may not be clones like you, but we were born from artificial wombs when we were sixteen years old. Had the people who had us had their way, we'd still be inside those things."

"Okay, whatever," he said dismissing her. "Why are you here; to mess with me?"

It didn't sound like she was winning over her first recruit and time was quickly running out. "Latnok, the organization your dad works for, tried to kill us both a little more than three months ago." She kept her face solid as steel. "They killed Kyle, and will surely kill you when your experiment is deemed over."

He let out a quick breath from his nose, like a little laugh. "So I'm an experiment now?"

She sighed in frustration. "Here," she shouted. The room dissolved to the scene of a house exploding in the middle of the night. A column of fire erupted from the roof of the home as a topless figure briefly watched the explosion before running away.

Jessi had intentionally put herself between Charles and her memory self. It seemed to work because he never looked back. He stood still, his mouth agape.

She coldly recalled that night. "They sent four people to kill us, two planted the bomb and the others stayed outside to detonate it."

"Where are you?" he asked.

"It's not important."

"Yes it is! How do I know you didn't just dream this up?" he replied.

She growled in response. "I didn't let you see me because I wasn't fully dressed at the time of the attack okay?" She had less than 30 seconds to go.

"Now I have to see!" he exclaimed, looking all around and ignoring the inferno. Not seeing anyone, he said, pointing to the house, "Are you still in there?"

"No, Kyle was." She paused a second then said, "And now he's dead." Sure enough the fire quickly spread throughout the rest of the house once Kyle passed away. The column of fire no longer stood like a beacon and the heat spread evenly throughout the husk that had been their home.

He ignored the flames and the destruction, peering in the dark corners for any sign of her memory self. Thankfully she'd been well hidden.

She muttered to no one in particular. "Grow up already."

Suddenly they were back outside, the five minutes she'd planned as a reasonable recruitment time had elapsed without so much as a hint of having won him over. Now she had to wonder whether she'd have to kill him or somehow maim his brain, making him forget everything about her.

He recovered quickly and had his pocket knife in hand in a fraction of a second. She had his knife in her hand and in her pocket faster.

"Where is it?" he asked. "I just had it."

"I'm debating whether I have to erase your memory. Do you want to plead your case over coffee?" She pointed to the coffee shop everyone seemed to go to here. She couldn't really do what she said, and she certainly didn't want to be killing her potential recruits either, but she needed to stall him to think things through. This had not gone well so far.

As expected he believed she could do just that. "No Jessi, please, let's talk."

"My name's Kessi now." She walked beside him. "Shouldn't you lock your bike?" she asked after they got down the steps.

"It's not mine, I picked the lock." He walked beside her in confidence.


End file.
